Trump called American war dead ‘losers’ and
‘suckers’, report alleges
The president made the comments as he declined to
visit a cemetery outside Paris where US Marines are buried, according to the
Atlantic report
Associated
Press
Fri 4 Sep
2020 03.14 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/03/trump-american-war-dead-losers-suckers-report
A new
report details multiple instances of Donald Trump allegedly making disparaging
remarks about members of the US military who have been captured or killed,
including referring to the American war dead at the Aisne-Marne American
Cemetery in France in 2018 as “losers” and “suckers”.
The
allegations were first reported Thursday in the Atlantic. A senior Defense
Department official with firsthand knowledge of events confirmed some of the
remarks to the Associated Press, including the 2018 cemetery comments.
The defense
official said Trump made the comments as he declined to visit the cemetery
outside Paris during a meeting following his presidential daily briefing on the
morning of 10 November 2018.
Staffers
from the National Security Council and the Secret Service told Trump that rainy
weather made helicopter travel to the cemetery risky, but they could drive
there. Trump responded by saying he didn’t want to visit the cemetery because
it was “filled with losers”, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity
because the official was not authorized to discuss it publicly.
The White
House blamed the canceled visit on poor weather at the time.
In another
conversation on the trip, the Atlantic said, Trump referred to the 1,800
Marines who died in the first world war battle of Belleau Wood as “suckers” for
getting killed.
“This
report is patently false,” said White House strategic communications director
Alyssa Farah. “President Trump holds the military in the highest regard. He’s
demonstrated his commitment to them at every turn: delivering on his promise to
give our troops a much needed pay raise, increasing military spending, signing
critical veterans reforms, and supporting military spouses. These nameless
anecdotes have no basis in fact and are offensive fiction.”
Joe Biden,
the Democratic presidential nominee, issued a statement on the allegations: “If
the revelations in today’s Atlantic article are true, then they are yet another
marker of how deeply President Trump and I disagree about the role of the
President of the United States.”
The Defense
official also confirmed to the AP reporting in The Atlantic that Trump on
Memorial Day 2017 had gone with his chief of staff, John Kelly, to visit the
Arlington Cemetery gravesite of Kelly’s son, Robert, who was killed in 2010 in
Afghanistan, and said to Kelly: “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?”
The
Atlantic, citing sources with firsthand knowledge, also reported that Trump
said he didn’t want to support the August 2018 funeral of Republican senator
John McCain, a decorated Navy veteran who spent years as a Vietnam prisoner of
war, because he was a “loser”. It also reported that Trump was angered that flags
were flown at half-staff for McCain, saying: “What the fuck are we doing that
for? Guy was a fucking loser.”
In 2015,
shortly after launching his presidential candidacy, Trump publicly blasted
McCain, saying “He’s not a war hero.” He added, “I like people who weren’t
captured.”
Trump only
amplified his criticism of McCain as the Arizona lawmaker grew critical of his
acerbic style of politics, culminating in a late-night “no” vote scuttling
Trump’s plans to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Trump has continued to attack
McCain for that vote, even posthumously.
The
magazine said Trump also referred to former President George HW Bush as a
“loser” because he was shot down by the Japanese as a Navy pilot in World War
II.
Keith
Kellogg, national security adviser to Vice President Mike Pence, tweeted
Thursday: “The Atlantic story is completely false. Absolutely lacks merit. I’ve
been by the President’s side. He has always shown the highest respect to our
active duty troops and veterans with utmost respect paid to those who have
given the ultimate sacrifice and those wounded in battle.”
POLITICS
Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are ‘Losers’ and
‘Suckers’
The president has repeatedly disparaged the
intelligence of service members, and asked that wounded veterans be kept out of
military parades, multiple sources tell The Atlantic.
JEFFREY
GOLDBERG
5:32 PM ET
When
President Donald Trump canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery
near Paris in 2018, he blamed rain for the last-minute decision, saying that
“the helicopter couldn’t fly” and that the Secret Service wouldn’t drive him
there. Neither claim was true.
Trump
rejected the idea of the visit because he feared his hair would become
disheveled in the rain, and because he did not believe it important to honor
American war dead, according to four people with firsthand knowledge of the
discussion that day. In a conversation with senior staff members on the morning
of the scheduled visit, Trump said, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s
filled with losers.” In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump
referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as
“suckers” for getting killed.
Belleau
Wood is a consequential battle in American history, and the ground on which it
was fought is venerated by the Marine Corps. America and its allies stopped the
German advance toward Paris there in the spring of 1918. But Trump, on that
same trip, asked aides, “Who were the good guys in this war?” He also said that
he didn’t understand why the United States would intervene on the side of the
Allies.
Trump’s
understanding of concepts such as patriotism, service, and sacrifice has
interested me since he expressed contempt for the war record of the late
Senator John McCain, who spent more than five years as a prisoner of the North
Vietnamese. “He’s not a war hero,” Trump said in 2015 while running for the
Republican nomination for president. “I like people who weren’t captured.”
There was
no precedent in American politics for the expression of this sort of contempt,
but the performatively patriotic Trump did no damage to his candidacy by
attacking McCain in this manner. Nor did he set his campaign back by attacking
the parents of Humayun Khan, an Army captain who was killed in Iraq in 2004.
Trump
remained fixated on McCain, one of the few prominent Republicans to continue
criticizing him after he won the nomination. When McCain died, in August 2018,
Trump told his senior staff, according to three sources with direct knowledge
of this event, “We’re not going to support that loser’s funeral,” and he became
furious, according to witnesses, when he saw flags lowered to half-staff. “What
the fuck are we doing that for? Guy was a fucking loser,” the president told
aides. Trump was not invited to McCain’s funeral. (These sources, and others
quoted in this article, spoke on condition of anonymity. The White House did
not return earlier calls for comment, but Alyssa Farah, a White House
spokesperson, emailed me this statement shortly after this story was posted:
“This report is false. President Trump holds the military in the highest
regard. He’s demonstrated his commitment to them at every turn: delivering on
his promise to give our troops a much needed pay raise, increasing military
spending, signing critical veterans reforms, and supporting military spouses.
This has no basis in fact.”)
Eliot A.
Cohen: America’s generals must stand up to Trump
Trump’s
understanding of heroism has not evolved since he became president. According
to sources with knowledge of the president’s views, he seems to genuinely not
understand why Americans treat former prisoners of war with respect. Nor does
he understand why pilots who are shot down in combat are honored by the
military. On at least two occasions since becoming president, according to
three sources with direct knowledge of his views, Trump referred to former
President George H. W. Bush as a “loser” for being shot down by the Japanese as
a Navy pilot in World War II. (Bush escaped capture, but eight other men shot
down during the same mission were caught, tortured, and executed by Japanese
soldiers.)
When
lashing out at critics, Trump often reaches for illogical and corrosive
insults, and members of the Bush family have publicly opposed him. But his cynicism
about service and heroism extends even to the World War I dead buried outside
Paris—people who were killed more than a quarter century before he was born.
Trump finds the notion of military service difficult to understand, and the
idea of volunteering to serve especially incomprehensible. (The president did
not serve in the military; he received a medical deferment from the draft
during the Vietnam War because of the alleged presence of bone spurs in his
feet. In the 1990s, Trump said his efforts to avoid contracting sexually
transmitted diseases constituted his “personal Vietnam.”)
Amy J.
Rutenberg: What Trump’s draft deferments reveal
On Memorial
Day 2017, Trump visited Arlington National Cemetery, a short drive from the
White House. He was accompanied on this visit by John Kelly, who was then the
secretary of homeland security, and who would, a short time later, be named the
White House chief of staff. The two men were set to visit Section 60, the
14-acre area of the cemetery that is the burial ground for those killed in
America’s most recent wars. Kelly’s son Robert is buried in Section 60. A first
lieutenant in the Marine Corps, Robert Kelly was killed in 2010 in Afghanistan.
He was 29. Trump was meant, on this visit, to join John Kelly in paying
respects at his son’s grave, and to comfort the families of other fallen
service members. But according to sources with knowledge of this visit, Trump,
while standing by Robert Kelly’s grave, turned directly to his father and said,
“I don’t get it. What was in it for them?” Kelly (who declined to comment for
this story) initially believed, people close to him said, that Trump was making
a ham-handed reference to the selflessness of America’s all-volunteer force.
But later he came to realize that Trump simply does not understand
non-transactional life choices.
“He can’t
fathom the idea of doing something for someone other than himself,” one of
Kelly’s friends, a retired four-star general, told me. “He just thinks that
anyone who does anything when there’s no direct personal gain to be had is a
sucker. There’s no money in serving the nation.” Kelly’s friend went on to say,
“Trump can’t imagine anyone else’s pain. That’s why he would say this to the
father of a fallen marine on Memorial Day in the cemetery where he’s buried.”
I’ve asked
numerous general officers over the past year for their analysis of Trump’s
seeming contempt for military service. They offer a number of explanations.
Some of his cynicism is rooted in frustration, they say. Trump, unlike previous
presidents, tends to believe that the military, like other departments of the
federal government, is beholden only to him, and not the Constitution. Many
senior officers have expressed worry about Trump’s understanding of the rules
governing the use of the armed forces. This issue came to a head in early June,
during demonstrations in Washington, D.C., in response to police killings of
Black people. James Mattis, the retired Marine general and former secretary of
defense, lambasted Trump at the time for ordering law-enforcement officers to
forcibly clear protesters from Lafayette Square, and for using soldiers as
props: “When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to
support and defend the Constitution,” Mattis wrote. “Never did I dream that
troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate
the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a
bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership
standing alongside.”
Another
explanation is more quotidian, and aligns with a broader understanding of
Trump’s material-focused worldview. The president believes that nothing is
worth doing without the promise of monetary payback, and that talented people
who don’t pursue riches are “losers.” (According to eyewitnesses, after a White
House briefing given by the then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General
Joe Dunford, Trump turned to aides and said, “That guy is smart. Why did he
join the military?”)
Yet
another, related, explanation concerns what appears to be Trump’s pathological
fear of appearing to look like a “sucker” himself. His capacious definition of
sucker includes those who lose their lives in service to their country, as well
as those who are taken prisoner, or are wounded in battle. “He has a lot of
fear,” one officer with firsthand knowledge of Trump’s views said. “He doesn’t
see the heroism in fighting.” Several observers told me that Trump is deeply
anxious about dying or being disfigured, and this worry manifests itself as
disgust for those who have suffered. Trump recently claimed that he has
received the bodies of slain service members “many, many” times, but in fact he
has traveled to Dover Air Force Base, the transfer point for the remains of
fallen service members, only four times since becoming president. In another
incident, Trump falsely claimed that he had called “virtually all” of the
families of service members who had died during his term, then began
rush-shipping condolence letters when families said the president was not
telling the truth.
Trump has
been, for the duration of his presidency, fixated on staging military parades,
but only of a certain sort. In a 2018 White House planning meeting for such an
event, Trump asked his staff not to include wounded veterans, on grounds that
spectators would feel uncomfortable in the presence of amputees. “Nobody
wants to see that,” he said.
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